Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date

1429

Joan of Arc entered the besieged city of Orleans to lead a victory over the English.

1861

Maryland's House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union.

1862

New Orleans fell to Union forces during the Civil War.

1916

The Easter Rising in Dublin collapsed as Irish nationalists surrendered to British authorities.

1945

American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

1945

In a Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun and designated Admiral Karl Doenitz his successor. Hitler killed himself the next day.

1946

Twenty-eight former Japanese leaders were indicted as war criminals.

1974

President Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of secretly made White House tape recordings related to the Watergate scandal.

1981

Truck driver Peter Sutcliffe admitted in a London court to being the ''Yorkshire Ripper,'' the killer of 13 women in northern England during a five-year period.

1983

Harold Washington was sworn in as the first black mayor of Chicago.

1992

Exxon executive Sidney Reso was kidnapped outside his Morris Township, N.J., home by Arthur Seale, a former Exxon security official, and Seale's wife, Irene; Reso died in captivity.

1992

Deadly rioting that claimed 54 lives and caused $1 billion in damage erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King.

1996

Former CIA Director William Colby was missing and presumed drowned after an apparent boating accident in Maryland; his body was later recovered.

1997

Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees. Sentenced to 25 years in prison, he was dishonorably discharged.

1997

Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.

1999

The Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived in Belgrade on a mission to win freedom for three U.S. POWs held by Yugoslavia.

1899

Jazz legend Duke Ellington was born in Washington D.C.

1997

Newspaper columnist Mike Royko died in Chicago at age 64.